Blowtorches and vino

What a great V-day I had. Apple tv, tulips, a surprise tuna tower, loads of heavy cream, perfectly cooked red meat, blow torches, and a delicious bottle of vino from Sonoma courtesy of our trip with Devon and Willis. Doesn’t get much better!

Staying in and cooking was definitely the best idea for us last night. After work, Wes and I immediately got busy on getting dinner ready. He surprised me with several of the aforementioned items, which I was absolutely thrilled to receive. Apple tv is the coolest. I don’t know much about it yet and have only used it once, but I feel very confident in my claim that it is the coolest. We already were able to watch one of my all time favorite rom-coms last night, IQ. Meg Ryan, Tim Robbins, and Albert Einstein… what a cast!

But, back to dinner, as mentioned yesterday, we stuck to our menu of steaks, risotto, asparagus, with a surprise addition of brussel sprouts. Wes prepared the steaks using some kind of marinade he came up with. I think it was a combo of lemon (very obvious in the picture below), garlic, soy sauce, worsecterchire, salt and pepper, parsley, and probably a few other random items. Tasty! He also glammed up the asparagus and brussel sprouts for us in a similar marinade. I’m ok admitting that I really do not like brussel sprouts. I eat them solely because I know they are good for me and my body appreciates that, especially considering the amounts of heavy cream I consumed last night.

Wes’ steaks

I stuck to prepping the more girly items: risotto and creme brulee. The risotto was really pretty easy to make, and definitely worth the extra time spent stirring away over the stove. Give this recipe a try… I bet it will knock the socks off of the boxed risotto mixes.

In a large pan, cook onion and garlic in olive oil and butter for about 5 minutes. Add in risotto and mix in well with the onion mixture. On medium heat, add in in cup of chicken stock. Let the stock almost completely absorb, then add in another cup. Let absorb, add in the third cup. Did I mention you need to stand and stir this the whole time? Yes, your arm may get tired. It will thank you later after you consume all that cream. Once all the stock has absorbed and the risotto no longer has a chewy texture, add in cream and cheese. Mix until well blended. Throw in a couple shakes of pepper. Garnish with green onions, or parsley, or even more cheese if you would like.

It really was delicious. I imagine you can try to healthify it some with skim or two percent milk, as opposed to cream. Since it was for a special occasion, we went all out.

Happy Valentine’s!!

On to the brulee, the custard didn’t set up quite as nicely as I would have liked, which made it quite difficult to choke down. Wes barely touched his.

Not.

I wish I could say the puddling like texture stopped me from eating it, but that is far, very far, from the truth. It tasted delicious, creamy and cool with the sugary brittleness on top. Delicious. And the best part is, the recipe I made was for four servings so we get to do it all over again tonight! Bring on the blow torch. The recipe I used can be found here. We used 2 tsps of vanilla instead of a bean though and sprinkled ours with blueberrys to get our fruit serving in.

Before

After!!!

I hope everyone had a great evening. Any new successful recipes from last night I should know about? Would love to hear them!